Cingular Will Charge Extra Fee for Using an Old Phone

Cingular Wireless may start charging customers with older cell phones a $4.99 fee as early as next month. Cingular wants to get rid of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and analog technology on its network and use Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) instead. The “legacy technology surcharge” affects about 8% of Cingular’s customers. Who knew a cell phone would function long enough to become that obsolete?

In the interest of fair disclosure, Cingular is the wireless carrier for this journal, largely by default – AT&T got bought out, and who could be bothered to go phone service shopping during Christmas? And the service was adequate, although the company’s reputation may suggest otherwise. Cell phone service is about as important as which car insurance company one uses, anyway, much of a muchness.

According to Cingular, 92% of its 57.3 million subscribers use phones based on GSM technology, and the others are driving up costs. Running three different technologies is a pain and pointless. “The per-customer cost of using that network is increasing considerably. That’s why we made a decision to impose this charge” a company statement said. Until they switch, users of the unfavored systems will provide $23.5 million a month in extra revenue.

It’s not all stick and no carrot, though. Cingular is also offering discounts on new phones to customers using the older systems, though details are sketchy. A new contract usually comes with a free phone, unless one wants all the bells and whistles, so it's hard to see why anyone has an old phone anyway. Where this may hurt Cingular is if it forces some people who haven’t paid any attention to their cell phone service to start looking around. Losing customers to T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon isn’t such a good result

However, experience shows that most cell phones are designed to be disposable after a year or so. Buttons stop working through continuous use; the unit gets dropped, kicked, or simply left somewhere. What is amazing is not that Cingular is charging people for analog and TDMA service, but rather than any phones using those technologies haven’t been sat on, mislaid or laundered (it’s a long story). Still, someone somewhere is listening to an 8-track, watching a Betamax and talking on an analog mobile phone – the trailing edge of technology.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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